Transcription can be tough. I mean, let’s not mince words here. You can spend an entire Friday night alone, sweating it out in a sweltering condominium, struggling to keep up with a voice that is always just ahead of your fingers. All for five or six dollars, which breaks down to…what? Two dollars an hour? Three, if you’re super-fast?
But karate can be tough, too. As can sitting zazen, or practicing the same figures over and over again on the ice. Any physical skill takes repetition to achieve mastery. And beyond mastery, there is the hope of something else.
I feel a little silly calling it “something else,” but it’s very mysterious. I supposed it doesn’t matter what I call it: “inner peace,” “enlightenment,” “a trance-state,” or – what the heck – “the Great Spiritual Penguin-Feed”. I don’t really know what to call it. But there comes a time in almost every transcription where the effort falls away and it’s no longer work.
I suppose that’s why I do it: for the experience of being in the zone. No matter what else is going on in my life, or around me, all my small griefs and petty worries disappear when I get into the rhythm of the keyboard. First, it’s effort, then skill, then mastery. And finally: this state of feeling calm and centered that makes it all very much worthwhile.
Posted by Opal Goodhope
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